September included a lot of soccer.
Hot soccer days where sometimes you need to look up and you’ll see “angel slides” that make you appreciate the sun, even just for a brief moment until you’re cursing it sweating to death again 🙂

(Lots more about soccer back HERE and HERE.)

And then you get a great picture here or there showing you what in the world your son is up to on the other side of the world.

I can’t even remember who sent that, but it makes me SO HAPPY when I randomly get sent pictures of that boy right there.

(So much to update on him hopefully soon…)

September was the month that Dave’s parents arrived home from Africa.

…and my brother and his family came to visit the same weekend (Labor Day):

(More about their visit back HERE.)

…and so did our great friend Rose Dall from our Virginia days (more about her and her amazing art in that same link up there).

Back flips with cousins on Labor Day:

These guys mastered the back tuck…

…and also synchronized diving 🙂

(Lots more on all that Labor Day hoopla back HERE.)

By September Elle had pretty much rooted her heart in Hawaii.

I’m not sure if we’ll ever get her back.

More about that soon too.

Lucy’s darling gymnastics teacher:

(We have hired a few teachers to work with her individually on different things since she can’t keep up with regular lessons at this point and she is pleased as punch about that.)

Desert sunsets make me so happy.

And our family group texts make me so happy when someone texts “sunset alert” so that we can all go out and admire wherever we may be.

Visiting Teaching lunch:

I love the visiting teaching program in our church.  We are assigned people to visit and check on during the month and I love getting to know so many different women I can learn so much from!

Claire and I got to go to Utah to meet Baby Moses in September, and had a grand baby shower with all these cousins I adore so much:

(Much more about that trip back HERE.)  Loved being with these sisters of mine…

…and especially that sweet baby Moses!

Soccer nights:

I don’t know why this is in my “September” photos, but for some reason I was looking up how we did jobs when the kids were much younger.

Lunch dates are still going strong:
(More about lunch dates back HERE.)
Lucy is taking off on the piano.
And she is a counter.  I have never heard a child count so well.

I have to admit it is quite darling.  She is totally on key and counts perfectly despite the fact that sometimes she has to stand up and get really close to the music to actually see what she’s playing.

Lucy sang with all the other kids for her cousin’s baptism.  She sure likes to sing her heart out!

My friend Sarah came to visit from England, and I’m sure I wrote about it somewhere but I don’t know where!  But here we are, so glad we got to visit her back in her territory last summer (back HERE).

We had an “around the world” youth activity at church.  The kids all rotated around to different stations where they learned about different countries.  Russia, Mozambique, England, China, and one other one I can’t remember were represented.

I have to admit it was a pretty great night, and I wish I had more pictures of each station!

I just have ours, because our family did the little station on China.

The afternoon before the activity Claire and her friend were disappointed I didn’t pick up any fortune cookies along with the chopsticks I grabbed.
So they decided to take matters into their own hands and make their own:

 They made chocolate chip cookies, cut them into fourths, and stuck home-made fortunes in them.

 How sweet is that?

Loved these few I collected at the end, along with one of the “passports” the kids got stamped as they rotated through the stations:

I probably have about 364 pictures of Lucy like this…me not pictured huffing and puffing behind her trying to keep up on our way to the bus:

This is a picture out-take of a video:

A long video that I started recording at dinner one night when the conversation shifted to our time in China.

I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that we don’t all thank our lucky stars that that adventure happened.  For what it taught us, for the good and the bad.

I am so so so grateful.

This is another video outtake:

It’s of a very creative dance Lucy made up one evening when she was in a dancing/happy mood.

We spent some pretty great days over in California with Dave’s adult siblings talking over the world…

…and getting about 2.9 minutes of reading in:

HA!  Lots more about that trip back HERE.

While we were gone, Claire and Grace got to go to a concert with some friends who invited them.

I’m pretty sure they didn’t have much fun 🙂

Also while we were gone Claire had her first club soccer match.

Thank goodness for good friends to get her there and send cute pictures.

Got our shelves painted in our bedroom.

There were multiple things like this found around our house in September:

That girl could hardly wait for the big day.

We had our little Jerusalem Family Home Evening with Olivia.

All about that back HERE, but when I posted that we hadn’t sent our thank you card yet which I had to take a picture of:

Because seriously how does Lucy come up with those things sometimes?  Makes my heart happy.

These friends got to visit the temple together:

And then came the surprise visit of Elle.

Oh man that was an exciting day!

To watch the videos of when she surprised her sisters, check them out HERE.

I LOVE that the trend around here in these parts is to wear these W.W.J.D. bracelets:

(What Would Jesus Do?)  What better question can you be reminded to ask yourself over and over again each day?)
My brother sold his house and moved…

…in with us.  For just a little while while he’s waiting for his new house to go through.

We had an Art Masterpiece training at the Art Museum that I adore.

I was SO inspired by all the workshops and presentations.

…and it was pretty great to share with those great friends.

After that we headed to my sister-in-law’s stake where they were doing a huge refugee relief project.

So fun to have all these cousins involved working together.

This is typical of Claire’s sink (she gets her own) on Sundays:

She’s clearly overjoyed about it don’t you think?

We had to fit in a lot of things the very same hour the Sunday while Elle was at home.  It was the annual primary program:

(check out Lu folding her arms up there on the top row and singing her heart out up there)

Straight on to Elle’s friend’s farewell:

…which conflicted with a speech Dave had to give in another ward,

…while Lucy’s birthday got celebrated in our ward:

(She had sure been looking forward to that!)

My in-laws are updating their house so we all met there one night to take out all the things they were switching out.

…and celebrate a birthday:

Had to stop by and visit these cousins at work on our way home.

A desert sunset:

On our way to our youth service project:

I obviously couldn’t get enough.

The kids sang and performed for the elderly people in this home, and then we all split up and went  to make visits to each of their rooms.

Lots of cheering:

(more on that back HERE.)

Lucy, our “baby of the family,” finally decided she did like other babies at her friend’s house.

But then, how could you not like that sweet little cherub?
Lucy has been taking a really cool art class I’ll post more on soon, but loved this cute project she did the first session:

Oh my, I’m going to have to get better at posting segments of the month in the future because that was a lot.

But how I love going back and remembering all those going-ons now that they are fading so fast!

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7 Comments

  1. Hi Shawni
    I love reading your blog especialy your "little things" and those about motherhood, thank you so much. I would love to see more on the New House. I think your house is so beautiful and I would love to see how you have decor the rooms.
    Always looking forward to whats next on your blog 😊

    1. That is always on my "list" but I just can't seem to get to it! I hope soon! We are finishing up the living room and dining room finally so I'll have to show before and after pictures when we finally finish!

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